


something special

by icetowns



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 13:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16811743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icetowns/pseuds/icetowns
Summary: When Eleanor catches a cold, she begins to feel upset about the lack of love she received throughout her life, and Chidi is the person there to listen to her open up about it.





	something special

**Author's Note:**

> hey! this is the first tgp fic i've posted on here, and i haven't really posted much here in a very long time because i've felt very insecure about it, and i still am, so lets hope this is good.  
> this one's for the amazing clm gc <3 let's gather those cheleanor crumbs ladies :)

“Eleanor,” Chidi said, calling for her attention as they sat, eating frozen yogurt together while discussing ethics, “what's going on?”

“What do you mean by that?” Eleanor asked him, placing the spoon back in her cake batter flavored frozen yogurt, covered in many colorful toppings. Chidi noticed this often; she always went with a lot of toppings rather than a few, like he does. 

It was one of the little things that proved to him that she could eventually teach him how to throw caution to the wind and actually enjoy life. It was such a small detail, but to Chidi it spoke more than words could about Eleanor.

“You’ve been more engaged with the material recently,” Chidi explained to her, “and even if it’s just your sarcastic jabs at the philosophers, you’re still paying attention and actively going along with it. There’s something very off about you right now though.”

“I think I’m getting sick, you know, like a cold or something,” she replied, looking around at the amazing paradise they were in afterward, “but how can I be sick  _ here?  _ Is that even possible?”

“I’m not sure,” Chidi said, looking at her face for more in indications of her possible illness.

He came down to the conclusion that it was just a cold, and not much harm could come of it, but Chidi was still confused and concerned for her. 

Was it possible? After all, it was the Good Place; a wonderful, amazing, and perfect paradise (other than the fact that Eleanor was there by mistake, of course). 

“Haven’t you had like five billion stomach aches since we got here?” Eleanor recalled, “if you can have a stomach ache, a cold must be possible.”

“Should we ask Janet?” he proposed, quitting the search for an answer in his mind; he realized that nothing about this magical afterlife makes any sense at all to him, so he wasn’t going to try to justify any of it on his own.

“No, I have a better idea,” Eleanor said to him, putting her spoon back in the frozen yogurt, “Michael created this neighborhood, he knows how it works. Shouldn’t we just go straight to the source and ask him?”

“Oh, we should!”

-

“Michael?” Eleanor awaited a reply, knocking on the door to his office.

“Eleanor?” Michael called out, “come on in!”

Eleanor and Chidi both walked in, and Michael seemed to cheer a bit.

“Oh and Chidi, what a surprise!” he beamed at them, “have a seat!”

“Hi, Michael, Chidi and I just had a little question about the neighborhood,” Eleanor said.

“And we know we could have asked Janet, but we thought we could get it from the source,” Chidi added.

Michael seemed to get slightly, yet visibly, become nervous because of those statements. His smile twitched slightly, and he shifted in his chair a little bit.

“So…” he began, “what do you want to ask me?”

“I seem to have…” Eleanor thought about her wording for a second, “I seem to have come down with a little something. Is that possible?”

She smiled to herself internally. She was proud of that one; she thought she’d sounded like a soccer mom…  _ soccer moms go to the Good Place… right? _

She shook off the question and continued with the matter at hand.

“Well, yes, it is possible,” Michael explained, “a lot of humans find comfort in physical sickness.”

“Why is that?” Chidi asked.

“Answer me this, Chidi,” Michael said to him, proposing a scenario to him, “you’re a little kid, and you have a little bit of a fever. Your mom walks in, and she gives you a big hug. Can you describe what that feels like?”

“Amazing,” Chidi replied, “there’s nothing better than hugs when you’re sick, especially from parents, you know, people that you love.”

“Exactly!” Michael said, smiling, “that’s why you’re sick, Eleanor, people enjoy it,”

“Oh,” she said, seemingly disappointed, “cool, thanks for everything Michael, you’re the best,” 

She immediately got up and rushed out of Michael’s office.

“Eleanor!” Chidi called for her, getting up from his chair, but then he turned to Michael before running out after her, “she’s being weird, but she’s sick, so you get it,”

“I don’t get it, I’m not a human.”

“Eleanor!” Chidi said, closing the door and chasing after her. She finally stopped running away after they walked out of the building.

“What?” she asked, teary eyed.

“Why are you sad?” Chidi asked her, “you’ll get better.”

“Not from this,” Eleanor said.

“Not from what?”

“No one loves me, Chidi,” she explained to him,

“no one ever has.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

“El—”

“Stop,” she said, “I’m going home to go to sleep.”

It was in that moment Chidi was sure about something for the very first time; in fact, he was completely sure about a couple things for the first time.

He wasn’t just sure about things though; he was sure about Eleanor.

The first thing was that he was sure she has the goodness in her soul to become the good person she could always be.

Secondly, she was a person worth fighting for. She would always be improving, she would never stop.

Also, Chidi was completely sure that someone in all of Eleanor’s existence, dead and alive, had to have loved her.

And finally, the reason he knew he was sure about that was because he was sure it was him; he was the one that loved her.

-

“Hey,” he said, walking into her bedroom, slowly, “are you awake?”

“No,” Eleanor replies, the cold obviously taking a toll on her voice, “I can’t sleep.”

Chidi sat down on the bed beside where she was laying, grabbing one of her hands and holding it tight.

“So tell me, why do you think no one loves you?”

“We aren’t even thirty seconds into this conversation and you’ve already asked me something that deep,” Eleanor laughs, “that came out of nowhere.”

“It didn’t really come out of nowhere,” Chidi replied, “last I saw you, you were running away in tears because of just that.”

Eleanor sighed, and paused to think for a couple of seconds. She didn’t really want to say anything about that to anyone. She never had in her life; but somehow, she was drawn enough to Chidi, so she felt inclined to do it.

She was completely baffled by why she wanted to tell Chidi. They’d only known each other for a few months… she felt something for him, though. It was inexplicable.

She felt like there was something between them. 

Something special. Something that could never disappear. Something that no one in the universe could ever take from them, no matter how hard they tried.

Maybe she didn’t belong in the Good Place, but there was one thing she was certain about; soulmates were real. Eleanor didn’t know who she was to Chidi, or how she felt about him, but she knew he was her soulmate.

So she decided to tell him about it.

“As a kid, everyone else loved being sick, but I just never got the hype.”

Chidi was half surprised when she began speaking; he half expected her to keep it bottled up inside her rather than say a word to him.

“Sure, school forking sucks, but for me it let me get away from my parents,” Eleanor explained, “they sucked even more.”

“What were they like?” Chidi asked.

Eleanor second guessed herself for a moment. There was no way she was going to tell Chidi about her parents. She didn’t want to tell  _ anyone _ no matter who they were.

Then she looked over at their hands, her fingers laced between his, and she couldn't help it.

_ What the hell, this is Chidi, I can tell him anything. _

“They were the worst,” Eleanor said, “my dad didn’t give anyone the light of day, and my mom was so worried about herself that she paid no attention to me. I had to take care of myself my entire life, I never got a moment to be a real kid because my parents were horrible to me. They didn’t love me, and if your own mother doesn’t love you, who could ever love you?”

Chidi frowned at how nonchalantly she managed to say the last part of that statement. It was like it was completely natural for her to think that. It shouldn’t have been that way.

“Anyway, it was because of them that I think I’m incapable of love,” Eleanor said, “I was never taught how to love someone. And no one ever said they loved me either, and also, no one gave me a reason to even think they did,” she paused, looking up into Chidi’s eyes… she wanted to tell him that he was an exception to that, because he did make her feel loved, but she had the doubt in her mind that he didn’t feel that way, and she was just assuming because she doesn’t know what love actually is, so instead she continued, “it also goes back into the whole sick thing. Everyone’s parents gave them extra hugs and love just because they had a little fever or whatever, but I never got that. The most I got was some medicine to— and I’m directly quoting my mother— ‘ _ make sure Eleanor doesn’t die _ .’”

Chidi was left completely speechless. All he could manage to do in the moment was tighten his grip on her hand.

“Eleanor…” he stumbled to find words to say, but when he couldn’t, he just sat, staring at her.

“Was it that bad?” she asked, smirking at him.

“You didn’t deserve any of that,” Chidi said to her as she sat to face him, “I hate how you said that as if it were nothing.”

“In my own head it was a lot, but when I open up like that, it seems like I’m completely chill about it because how else am I going to cope with it?” Eleanor explained, “I have to be fine, at least outwardly.”

“You don’t have to be,” he said, rubbing her arm gently with his free hand, “you broke down earlier, and you had so much reason to.”

She nodded in agreement, her head hanging after she did.

“It’s okay to to be sad, Eleanor.”

Her and Chidi sat silently for a second, and Eleanor finally let herself shed a tear.

Chidi cupped one side of Eleanor’s face with his hand wiped her tear away with his thumb, and she looked up at him when he did.

“You’re loved, Eleanor,” Chidi said, putting his hand down and placing it on top of their interlocked hands, “and it’s all kinds of love. I need you to remember that. You have Jason and Tahani, and they love you a lot. Janet might be obligated to serve your every need, but she seems to have some human emotions, so she cares about you. And me…”

“And you…” she trailed off.

“Yeah, me…” he trailed off again, and he took a deep breath, “I also love you.”

The corners of Eleanor’s lips turned up slightly, but she shook it off.

_ He means it in a friend way. Not… like that. _

But then Chidi seemed to start stumbling around.

“I…” he couldn’t seem to form words, “Eleanor, I…”

_ He means it as a friend… _

“That made it sound meaningless, didn’t it?” He said, and Eleanor could feel her heart pick up speed.

“What do you mean?” she asked him.

“I love you,” Chidi said, “but, not the way I said Tahani, Jason, and Janet do. I  _ love _ love you.”

Eleanor’s heart skipped a beat.

_ Oh my God. _

“I love you too,” she didn’t even hesitate to say, “I  _ love  _ love you.”

They both laughed for a second about the confusing way they said it, and then they smiled at each other.

“You know, I want to kiss you, but I kind of would like to not be sick,” Chidi said, “are you contagious in the Good Place?”

“I don’t know,” Eleanor replied, “but I want to kiss you too, but we shouldn’t.”

“This is torture,” Chidi chuckled, and Eleanor basically had hearts in her eyes.

Then something dawned on her.

This is  _ torture. _

_ Torture. _

The world rang around inside her head.

_ Torture. Torture. Torture. _

Every single weird thing that wasn’t making sense suddenly lined up… it all made sense. It was all part of a plan.

“Holy shirt!” she exclaimed, “Chidi, this is the forking Bad Place!”

**Author's Note:**

> hope y'all enjoyed it!! feel free to leave me some feedback bc i want to get better at this.   
> thanks for reading!!   
> (again, ily ti and jules, this is for y'all)


End file.
